How rotten can a liberation movement become?
By Makusha Mugabe
I tried to find the meaning of the Shona word kufumuka as I prepared to write a piece about the state of Zanu (PF), but I could only find examples of its usage, e.g: “kufumuka kunge mwana wehure” and “kufumuka kunge mukadzi wechigure” – meaning as kufumuka as the child of a whore or kufumuka as the wife of a professional rude dancer.
I think you get the gist, kufumuka is worse than being disgusting or nauseating; it goes right to your humanity. This is the state of the party of liberation in Zimbabwe today. By its own president Robert Mugabe’s admission, its leaders were so engrossed in factional politics that they forgot to provide for food their youths in congress.
But to make it worse the President took it as an opportunity to not only flaunt his own wealth, but to also campaign for his young wife with bribes of meat, milk and sadza from him farm.
Stomachs full, the youths then went on to physically fight over positions in the Youth League as factional politics took a new dimension, with the surprise, but not-so-surprising entry of Grace Mugabe into the Zanu (PF) fray.
Mugabe must be saying his gamble almost paid off; staying in power for so long, playing factions off against each other until his wife was ready. “So I said to Amai Mugabe (Grace), we have maize, 1 000 tonnes, they can go and take. People need meat, they can go and take cattle they will find there, either 20 or 30. We will stop selling milk from our dairy farm and the milk will come here!”
Nobody even asks, where did you get all that wealth, but we are only just starting out on the Kufumuka Show, with Grace herself – the same one whom Robert Mugabe wants Zimbabweans to accept as the Mother of the Nation – ccoming out swinging in a speech to the party youths, saying there was nothing wrong with her affair The President while his wife was dying.
She would never feel bad about it even if the media continued to vilify her marriage to Mugabe as he was not the first man to have a polygamous marriage. She mentioned nothing about having been married to a man who has since then found himself on a permanent overseas assignment.
She even praised Jacob Zuma for standing up for what he wants, i.e. not making a secret of his wives, presumably unlike her own husband who only announced his relationship with her after Sally had died.
But going deeper into kufumuka, the lady who is being touted as a possible replacement for her husband, said she had no apologies about the vast tracts of land that she has been acquiring all over the fertile Mazoe Valley.
“I have the right to own land where I want, and people can say what they want.
“Yes, I took the land and I don’t have regrets at all for acquiring the land,” she said, claiming that she was only taking what was rightfully hers, even though some of the land was known to belong to Mazowe Citrus Estates.
In another case she dispossessed close to 1 000 families, according to Newsday, then she went on to denounce the Mazowe South MP Fortune Chasi who tried to intervene on their behalf.
The MP did not respond and is probably cowering in his home wondering whether he is not going to lose his job or whether a group of youths, full with Gushundo meat and milk, is not coming to rough him up.
Such is the level of kufumuka that that Zanu (PF) has reached.
Makusha Mugabe is the editor of ChangeZimbabwe.com where this piece was initially published
